You no doubt remember the brouhaha last week when several activists at a San Francisco embarrassed themselves and the President by (badly) singing a whining complaint about the administration’s treatment of Bradley Manning. At the time, it was widely assumed that the White House would simply shrug off said whining complaint: after all (and as the singers themselves had made clear), the President could still count on the protesters’ money, time, energy, and votes.  In fact, given the general triviality of the situation, President Obama would need to have a very, very, very thin skin indeed in order to make plausible a scenario where he lashed out at somebody for the embarrassment.

Yes.  About that.

To refresh your memory, here is a video of the event.

Another version was filmed by Carla Marinucci, who is a reporter for the San Francisco Chronicle. As it turns out, she was covering the event as a pool reporter – and had a cell phone camera – so she filmed it and uploaded it to the Chronicle’s blog as being newsworthy.  So the White House has had Carla removed as a pool reporter… apparently because she had the temerity to take a video record of the fact that, indeed, not everyone loves the President of the United States with every atom of their heart and soul.

What’s the deeper meaning?  Well, there isn’t one – except that the White House from the top on down is apparently mostly made up of easily-upset man-children who erupt into tantrums whenever they don’t get their way… but we knew that already.  Goodness knows how they’ll react to this report…

Moe Lane (crosspost)

PS: Ed Driscoll has more, including his noting of the amusing karmic backlash of the day.  The Chronicle was the paper that sat on Obama’s skyrocketing electricity bills quote for a year, you see.  And see where that forbearance got them?

PS: If you’re wondering, the rules have some give in them: “Pool reports must be filed before any online story or blog,” White House Press Correspondents’ Association rules state. Yet the guidelines also state: “Print poolers can snap pictures or take video. They are not obliged to share these pictures…but can make them available if they so choose.”